I just heard that the commitment to trial of Roberto Ferrario, as unique responsible for Bellaciao collective!!??, for the publication, as any website or blog could have done it, of a press statement from CGT related to the Shipyards of St Nazaire story, is notified by the Judge. This repressive action, obvious example of a will to control expression in the Net, is the symptom of increasing and very pernicious politic inflexibility, such as the one I noticed in several newspapers.

La France a un balai dans le dos: France has a broomstick in its back (a french expression meaning that stupid rigidity keeps France from acting), this is not new. It is the rigidity of our disposition and of our institutions that forced us to wait much more than a lot of our neighbors for fundamental rights such as the right to vote for women, or the right to abort.

And that will make us wait a long time again before answers can be done to questions as diverse as euthanasia legalization or marijuana un-penalization... Auto-claimed champion of human and citizen rights, our Jacobin Republic makes me think about Mrs Mesure, my first school teacher, who maintained order in the classroom with ruler raps over the children knuckles.

La France a un balai dans le dos, with its triumvirate at the top of the State, this is everyday the Punch and Judy show. Bang! Bang! Punch is all of us, “bottom people”, and between intellectual swindle, contempt and repression around every life corner, it makes a lot of knocks on the head! Oops! Stick blow again! To forbid is prescribed, in vogue! No doubt that the French, very much criticized by their neighbors, lock some madmen in a house to convince that those outside are not, as written by my compatriot Montesquieu.
Foster brothers of the English, thanks to free and sensual Elianor, the Gascon or the Girondin, more inspired by liberty than by the members of the Montagne sacrosanct “equality”, have not been worshippers of this centuries-old and centralizing devil who builds a “France from the top” not just geographic and politic, but also social and cultural. To praise fraternity while applying vassalage is not a rare paradox in this national citadel where ladders are missing...

If he hears now talking about the project for Perben law, the author of “l’Esprit des lois” (“Spirit of the laws”) must wonder if we are not forgetting his lesson: that the only guarantee for public liberties stands in the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers... And what could his Persian observe, being back here after three centuries? Well, without any doubt that the French love to regard themselves infallible judges, and are still stubborn with their fashion: they judge everything that is done in the other nations using this rule: something foreign always seems ridiculous to them (...) They accept to submit to some rival nation laws, provided that French wig makers decide for the foreign periwigs style...

Die-hard France, I don’t want someone forbid me to wear what I like where I like, might be a potatoes sack or Quetzacoatl quills! I don’t want, because I wear high-heeled boots and black tights, to be suspected of passive soliciting and inspected by policemen armed to the teeth, as it happened to me in front of the Sacré-Coeur where I was admiring Paris panorama - which seemed instantly less beautiful to me - with my young children...

Administrative France, I’ve had enough of you penetrating into my privacy every time I ask for an accommodation certificate for my friends from south countries coming few days in the mood for tourism! I’ve had enough of you doubting my existence, as it really happened to my elder son when he was a student: as he called on family allowances office in person, with his identity card and his birth certificate, he was told to come back later because this latter document did not mention “not deceased”, nothing proved that he was really alive... Could Kafka and Gogol have imagine such a scene? The joys of bureaucracy do not exist only in the east of Europe...

France of security, I don’t want my acts being subjected to legal and anonymous denouncement, or being processed by a hyper powerful police! I don’t want to be sentenced to forced health by sanitarian authorities that never admit they are guilty (not more than responsible, when evidences are too obvious) for their large-scale mistakes...

Generous France, I hope that, as you did it for me when you gave me the opportunity to go to University without the usually requested degree, since I was one of the many abandoned children in this society, you are going to get down to the mending of social elevator, and with a better word than “positive discrimination”, to show the Republic desire to respect and promote Liberty, Equality and Fraternity... Make the words live, get out of those words used by politicians when they mouth clichés that also knock us down, this is really a question of desire... To know how to rediscover this so French culture of desire should be surely the best way to beat off the diverse obscurantist temptations that threat our society, and that are logically reinforced by a politic of stick blows.

The far-right in Ukraine are acting as the vanguard of a protest movement that is being reported as pro-democracy. The situation on the ground is not as simple as pro-EU and trade versus pro-Putin and Russian hegemony in the region.
When US Senator John McCain dined with Ukraine’s opposition leaders in December, he shared a table and later a stage with the leader of the extreme far-right Svoboda party Oleh Tyahnybok.
This is Oleh Tyahnybok, he has claimed a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" (...)

Your support here: http://www.peaceinsyria.org/support.php
We, the undersigned, who are part of an international civil society increasingly worried about the awful bloodshed of the Syrian people, are supporting a political initiative based on the results of a fact-finding mission which some of our colleagues undertook to Beirut and Damascus in September 2012. This initiative consists in calling for a delegation of highranking personalities and public figures to go to Syria in order to (...)

At first glance, the results of America’s 2012 election appear to be a triumph for social, racial, and economic justice and progress in the United States: California voters passed a proposition requiring the rich to shoulder their fair share of the tax burden; Two states, Colorado and Washington, legalized the recreational use of marijuana, while Massachusetts approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes; Washington and two other states, Maine and Maryland, legalized same-sex (...)

In a 2004 episode of Comedy Central’s animated series South Park, an election was held to determine whether the new mascot for the town’s elementary school would be a “giant douche” or a “turd sandwich.” Confronted with these two equally unpalatable choices, one child, Stan Marsh, refused to vote at all, which resulted in his ostracization and subsequent banishment from the town.
Although this satirical vulgarity was intended as a commentary on the two (...)

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PART II
PART III
If there is one major inconsistency in life, it is that young people who know little more than family, friends and school are suddenly, at the age of eighteen, supposed to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, because of their limited life experiences, the illusions they have about certain occupations do not always comport to the realities.
I discovered this the first time I went to college. About a year into my studies, I (...)

PART I
PART II
PART IV
Disillusioned with the machinations of so-called “traditional” colleges, I became an adjunct instructor at several “for-profit” colleges.
Thanks largely to the power and pervasiveness of the Internet, “for-profit” colleges (hereinafter for-profits) have become a growing phenomenon in America. They have also been the subject of much political debate and the focus of a Frontline special entitled College Inc.
Unlike traditional (...)

PART I
PART III
PART IV
Several years ago, a young lady came into the college where I was teaching to inquire about a full-time instructor’s position in the sociology department. She was advised that only adjunct positions were available. Her response was, “No thanks. Once an adjunct, always an adjunct.”
Her words still echo in my mind.
Even as colleges and universities raise their tuition costs, they are relying more and more on adjunct instructors. Adjuncts are (...)

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PART IV
When The Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution over two hundred years ago, Americans were blessed with many rights considered to be “fundamental.” One conspicuously missing, however, was the right to an education.
This was not surprising given the tenor of the times. America was primarily an agrarian culture, and education, especially higher education, was viewed as a privilege reserved for the children of the rich and (...)

If there is one universal question that haunts all human beings at some point in their lives, it is, “Why do we die?”
Death, after all, is the great illogic. It ultimately claims all, the rich and the poor, the mighty and the small, the good and the evil. Death also has the capability to make most human pursuits—such as the quest for wealth, fame and power—vacuous and fleeting.
Given this reality, I have often wondered why so many people are still willing to (...)

How much corruption can a “democracy” endure before it ceases to be a democracy?
If five venal, mendacious, duplicitous, amoral, biased and (dare I say it) satanic Supreme Court “justices”—John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy—have their way, America will soon find out.
In several previous articles for Pravda.Ru, I have consistently warned how the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision is one of the (...)

Imagine, if you will, that the United States government passes a law banning advertisers from sponsoring commercials on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show or Rupert Murdoch’s Fox (Faux) “News” Network.
On one hand, there would be two decided advantages to this ban: The National IQ would undoubtedly increase several percentage points, and manipulative pseudo-journalists would no longer be able to appeal to the basest instincts in human nature for ratings and profit while (...)

LIVE, from the State that brought you Senator Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin voters now proudly present, fresh from his recall election victory, Governor Scott Walker!
At first glance, it is almost unfathomable that anyone with a modicum of intelligence would have voted to retain Scott Walker as Wisconsin’s governor. This, after all, is a man who openly declared he is trying to destroy the rights of workers through a “divide and conquer” strategy; who received 61% of the (...)

A question I’ve frequently been asked since I began writing for Pravda.Ru in 2003 is, “Why did you become disillusioned with the practice of law?”
This question is understandable, particularly since, in most people’s minds, being an attorney is synonymous with wealth and political power.
I’ve always been reluctant to answer this question for fear it will discourage conscientious and ethical people from pursuing careers in the legal profession—a (...)